The Bright Side of a Natural Disaster
by Zil
Summary: Normalverse AU #6. Havok at an airport, in both senses of the word. Anyway, Havok deals with destruction at an airport and makes some new friends. No original characters


Disclaim! I do not own the characters and am not making any money from this.  
  
The Bright Side of a Natural Disaster  
  
"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, "Thank God, I'm still  
  
alive." But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again."  
  
- Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D, Calif.)  
  
As the airport begins shaking madly, my first thought is YES! Immediately my elation is replaced by fear for my life, but even as I conquer the adrenaline a part of me remains overjoyed. A geophysics convention, held in California of all places, and not even a tremor all week. We were a morbidly sad group. To top it off, I'm the one who's bumped from my flight and gets stuck in an L.A. airport for five hours. But now I'm the only convention goer left here; can you say exclusive earthquake gloating rights? My luck is definitely changing.  
  
I reconsider my luck as a shelf of books falls, nearly on my head. I manage to jump out of the way and get to the doorway of the little bookstore I had been browsing through. A couple people scramble out behind me. I manage to snag the arm of one of them and pull him back as the plate glass window in front of us explodes. The other falls to the ground in the shower of glass. Then the earthquake ends. For a moment there is silence, contrasting with the roaring violence that just took place. Then human groans mingle with the screaming of alarms.  
  
I'm still holding the other man's arm, and he turns to me, his expression dazed. "Thanks." The guy is about my age, dressed in a brown business suit.  
  
"No problem." I let go of him and we both move toward the fallen man. He seems all right, most of the cuts look superficial. The airport is slowly coming back to life. Some act normally, getting to their feet and looking for bags, other sit where they are, confused and uncomprehending. A new whining joins the blaring of alarms, and people with stretchers appear out of nowhere. A uniformed woman drops beside us, asking the usual medical questions. Discovering we're both okay she promptly ignores us and concentrates on the bleeding man lying on the floor. Standing, I dust bits of glass from my blue tee shirt. The businessman goes back in the store and comes out struggling with three suitcases and a duffel bag. I accept my duffel, and he walks over and passes the largest of the suitcases to the man now lying on the stretcher. He walks back over to me and we gaze at the flight schedule for a moment. One by one the flight times change to delayed, or in some cases, cancelled.  
  
"Wow," he says putting down his bags and running a hand through his hair. "That was something huh?"  
  
"About a 4 Richter-wise I'd say, but it was pretty short." He looks at me dumbly. I hold out my hand. "Alex Whitson, geophysicist." We shake.  
  
"Bobby Drake, now scared of earthquakes. It sure didn't seem short."  
  
"Yeah, they seem to last forever, but if you actually timed it you'd be surprised."  
  
"Not planning to ever be in another one, thank you, much less time it." We look around the airport. Broken glass here and there, bags and benches toppled, people staggering about.  
  
My relief and exhilaration is mixed with urgency to get home and write this up. "Do you think they'll have any of the flights back on soon?"  
  
"No idea. Probably not for a while. I'm going to go find a phone and call my wife."  
  
I nod at him. "Good luck man. Nice meeting you."  
  
He grins wryly. "Yeah, it's been an earth shattering good time."  
  
I groan at him and wave as he walks away. Strolling through the terminal I help out those I can, but it really wasn't a bad quake, and most people seem okay. The main glass overlooking the runway is spider-webbed, but the runway itself seems to have no damage. Still, almost all the flights now say cancelled. The lady at the ticket counter says my flight has been rerouted to the airport on the other side of the city, but it won't be leaving for quite some time. She directs me to the cafeteria where I can get a free coffee while I wait for the shuttle. The cafeteria is like a refugee camp, and I'm about to turn and walk right out when I spot a familiar brown suit.  
  
"Bobby, hi, did you get a hold of your wife?" He looks up from the table where he's sitting next to an attractive honey blonde.  
  
"No, have you seen the line up at the phones? She won't hear about it till the news tonight anyway, and I might as well wait and see when I can get home before I call. What happened to your flight?"  
  
"Moved to a different airport, I'm supposed to hang out here for the bus. What's the word on yours?"  
  
"I'll probably be here for another day at least, but I figured I'd wait around here and see if I could get a connector or something."  
  
"My flight was moved too. Where are you headed?" The girl looks up at me with dark green eyes.  
  
"Back home, Honolulu. I'm Alex Whitson by the way."  
  
"Oh, that's where I'm going too. My name's Lorna Dane. Why don't you pull up a seat?" I snag an empty chair and drag it over to the small table. "Actually," Lorna continues, "this could work out well. I promised the paramedic I'd find someone to keep me awake on the flight. Got beaned by some baggage, practically had to throw a hissy fit to keep them from taking me to the hospital. Bobby here promised to stay with me till the shuttle came so they let me go. Not to sound narcissistic, but I'm beginning to believe this whole earthquake thing could be a plot to thwart my vacation."  
  
"Actually it's a subtle shift in the Teutonic plates. We had predicted it, but it was supposed to be yesterday, and way out almost on the coastline. I'm a geophysicist."  
  
Her face lights up. "I've always been interested in geophysics, but I've never had time to pursue it. So tell me, is California really is going to drop in to the ocean."  
  
"Nope, but one day San Francisco and L.A. will be adjacent to each other." I grin and she smiles back at me.  
  
"I'm going to fight through the crowd for a coffee. Anyone else want one?" Bobby asks, rising. We both nod and he starts winding through the crowd, which is starting to seem less like a crowd and more like a mob. Glad I grabbed a chair when I did.  
  
I turn to Lorna. "So you're off to Hawaii for vacation? Where are you from?"  
  
"I'm from California. I was actually supposed to be leaving from San Francisco, but I wanted adventure so I drove down to L.A." She gives a little laugh. "This is actually going to be my first flight. My Aunt Ingrid died a few weeks ago and left me some money. She made me promise I'd go and spend it foolishly." She looked a bit wistful. "I've never even been out of California you know. Maybe I'm not supposed to leave and this earthquake was too keep me here. Don't laugh! You can't prove it isn't true mister Hawaiian brainiac. Maybe some of us were meant to stay where they were put and be content."  
  
She speaks lightly but her eyes shimmer with tears. "But you're not content, are you?" The question's asked before I even finish thinking it.  
  
She's taken aback. It was rude, and I'm about to apologize when she reconsiders.  
  
"No, I'm not, and I can't think of very many who would be. Who wants to spend their whole life working in a beauty salon in their hometown?" She looks straight at me for a moment like she's waiting for a response, then she blushes and turns slightly away. "Hey, subject change, what were you doing in town?"  
  
"Convention. It was held here so we could get to see that quake that just happened. It was predicted with some new technology, but I guess there's still more then a couple bugs in it seeing as we got the day and place wrong, but it's better than it being a complete failure, which is what was assumed when no quake happened yesterday. Seeing as I am probably the only geophysicist here I can write an excellent report on all this and recognition will be mine." I attempt not to sound gleeful. "When the system gets all worked out we'll have an accurate way of telling when, and especially where, the big ones are coming and we can have areas evacuated so people don't get hurt." We both watch two men supporting a woman between them limp by.  
  
"Like they did here." Lorna says it softly, looking down at the table and rubbing the side of her head.  
  
"Yes." I reply, feeling quiet myself. People did get hurt here. Maybe it wasn't too serious, but it could have been.  
  
"Are you okay?" she asks. I look at her sharply. "It's just, this is the first time you've looked at all somber since you sat down. You didn't seem to be fazed by this whole earthquake thing at all."  
  
I have to smile at that. "I'm not really. This is what I live for. Some people chase tornadoes; I like earthquakes, Tsunamis, that sort of thing. It may sound bizarre, but I've always had a thing for destruction. I feel most in control in the middle of confusion."  
  
Lorna leans forward across the table. "I guess that makes you a scary person. Or maybe I feel sad for you, it depends."  
  
"On what?"  
  
"On why you feel that way; either you just like to see things fall to ruin, or your life has been such that you can only relate when something uncontrollable is happening."  
  
I feel my smile fade a bit. She hit it right on the head. I didn't even know it until she named it. I should be mad, but Lorna's expression is so sweet and unassuming that she doesn't even realize what she's said. I lean backing my chair. "Wow." I can't even begin to think of how to respond to this revelation. She's right, she's so completely right.  
  
"Sometimes I feel out of control too." Her eyes pull at me. I couldn't look away if I wanted to.  
  
"Yeah?" I hope I don't sound as lost puppy to her as I do to myself.  
  
"Yeah, like I'm being pulled in all sorts of different directions. There's so many things I want to do and I just can't seem to stop spinning in a circle and make up my mind and do something."  
  
"Like geophysics." I try a teasing tone.  
  
"Exactly." She states. "It's like my life has no direction, like I'm waiting for something to happen." She looks frustrated and strangely powerful. "Sorry, I've been having a hard week. Right before my aunt died I found out I was adopted, that my parents died in a plane crash when I was a baby. I never knew, I never even thought..-I mean, everyone goes through their rebellious phase; I dyed my hair green when I was fourteen and my parents went ballistic. They really thought something was wrong with me." She gives a little laugh, tinged slightly with hysteria. "I just feel really cheated. Like everyone's had these secret lives." She shrugs and recomposes her expression. "I guess they have. I'm rambling. My life's rapidly become a soap opera. You probably think I'm a complete freak now."  
  
I almost laugh. "No. Definitely not. The freaky thing is my parents died in a plane crash too, when I was six." A little shudder goes through me. "Just my brother and I survived."  
  
"My God, that must have been awful."  
  
"Yeah. I don't remember much though." No, not too much. Just the initial stomach-churning terror as mom kissed me goodbye and dad chucked us out of the plane. Then as we fall: Scott's arms digging into my waist, sweat and cold making them slide, the sound of my own scream in my ears. But I'm not afraid. Freefalling, the wind catching at our torn parachute, flipping us, spinning us, the frenzied confusion, and I'm having the time of my life. That's what I remember. I should be terrified of planes, get cold sweats over flying, instead I look forward to turbulence.  
  
We sit in silence for a beat. She has the most beautiful lips. I try to picture her with green hair. She adjusts her coat and I see she has a tattoo on her shoulder, an eight-pointed star, like a compass. A chill creeps over me, and I see Bobby coming back with a plastic tray.  
  
"Okay, I got the complementary coffees easy enough, but I had to barter away my soul for the Danishes." He takes back the chair that I've been saving for him and sets down the tray. Sure enough it contains three Styrofoam cups of black coffee with a haphazard pile of creamers and sweeteners, and three gooey pastries.  
  
"Bless your soul." Lorna ignores the coffee and reaches for one of the hard won confections.  
  
"Don't have one anymore, remember?" he passes me a coffee and dumps cream into his own. "If I ever did in the first place. I'm an accountant." He pulls off his jacket and arranges it on the back of his chair.  
  
Lorna's face creases with concern. "Did you hurt your arm in the quake?"  
  
Drake looks down at the rather prominent bandage on his forearm. "Nope, got this on the job."  
  
"Thought you just said you were an accountant. Or was it some sort or calculator mishap?" I reach for another sweetener as I speak. It does look pretty bad. There's some dried red showing through the four-inch bandage.  
  
"Funny. No, I was doing some paper work for a specialized farm here. Some of the emus didn't appreciate my efforts at trying to keep them from going bankrupt. Beginning to think maybe Scott's right with his fear of animals with long necks."  
  
"Long necks?" asks Lorna.  
  
"Yeah," he says turning his attention to her. "Giraffes, ostriches, even horses. He wasn't always afraid; it started when my family and the Summers' went to the zoo together. My wife-"  
  
"Summers?" I interrupt. "Scott Summers?"  
  
"Yes, Scott and Jean Summers, they're old school friends of mine. Do you know them?"  
  
"Maybe. No. I had brother named Scott. Scott Summers. I was adopted when I was little. My adoptive parents lived in Hawaii, the last time I saw Scotty was back in the orphanage in Nebraska."  
  
Bobby looks me over more carefully. "You don't really look like him; Scott has brown hair and eyes." My own hair is a sun-bleached blond, and my eyes are blue. Well, my brother did look more like our dad, and I took after our mom. Anyway, what were the odds? Bobby continues speaking:  
  
"Actually, maybe there is some similarity, same chin and cheekbones. Scott's an orphan too, his parents died in a-"  
  
"-a plane crash?" I finish the sentence, sitting up in my chair.  
  
Bobby nods, a bit dumbfound. "Maybe I'd better get your e-mail address or something Alex. He's never mentioned a brother, but this is too weird."  
  
I'm almost trembling as Bobby copies down the address I give him. Lorna's hand snakes across the table and squeezes mine. Our eyes meet, and she smiles. A man with a megaphone drowns out all thought for a moment. Our shuttle is here.  
  
"Not a moment too soon, huh?" says Bobby, his own grin widening at the sight of our hands. "Word at the front was there's a plane to Dallas tonight that I might be able to get on, and then catch a flight home from there."  
  
Lorna and I gather up our baggage quickly. Lorna reaches over to shake Bobby's hand. "Bye Bobby, it was nice meeting you. I hope you get home tonight."  
  
"Me too," he replies. He shakes my hand as well. " I hope I'll be seeing you around Alex, like maybe at a certain family reunion in New York."  
  
"Thanks. I hope so too."  
  
As we walk away he calls after us. "Have a safe flight. Remember no falling asleep! And good luck to you two!" The wink I catch as I turn back for a moment means that last statement has less to do with the trip and probably more to do with the way Lorna catches my hand again to pull me out the door. 


End file.
